Is the nature of evil inherent in human beings from the moment they’re born, or is it something that can slowly spawn from inside like a disease? This is the question that Halloween Ends raises with the introduction of series newcomer Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell). While a divisive character among critics when the film was released, Corey brought new life into the franchise with a shift from Michael Myers’ clear-cut personification of evil to a more layered character that calls into question whether one terrible mistake can make a good person go bad, or if they were always bad to begin with.
The story occurs four years after Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills (2021). After the bloodbath on Halloween night and the subsequent disappearance of Michael Myers, the town of Haddonfield has been rocked by the trauma that The Shape has left in his wake. With no one left to project their hostility and paranoia, the town has put its focus on Corey, who, one year after the disappearance of Myers, had a fateful accident while babysitting on Halloween, which led to the death of a young boy named Jeremy Allen (Jaxon Goldberg). After a friendly encounter with franchise legend Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Corey begins a relationship with her granddaughter Allyson (Andie Matichak). When things start to look up for Corey, he has another run-in with a series regular (one who sports a mask), and his life steadily improves… all at the expense of those who’ve wronged him in the past.
While Corey has traits that are reflective of Michael Myers (having an alliterative name, a fondness for masks, sitting up in the iconic Undertaker fashion, and even shattering a glass chocolate milk bottle with his hand, similar to how Michael broke a glass car window in the original), he feels like a deliberate 180 from what made the original slasher villain famous. What made the original 1978 film scary and what made Michael Myers so intimidating was that he had no motive to kill people. He doesn’t get any pleasure from killing; he does it from some primal urge. He does it because he needs to. That’s where he and Corey differ.
Corey does have a motive. He begins as a sympathetic character because we, as the audience, know that the accident that led to Jeremy’s death was just that: an accident. It’s easy to feel for him when the rest of the town is either covertly cruel to him (like when people stare at him behind his back) or overtly hostile (like the gas station attendant who scolds him for taking too long by the beverage cooler or the driver who almost runs him over while he’s riding his bike). It’s because we know he made a horrible mistake, even if the rest of the town thinks he’s a murderer.
He can’t even find peace at home, being overwhelmed by his overbearing mother who constantly pushes boundaries and won’t let him live his life (in a film where someone gets their tongue cut off with a pair of scissors, the moment where she kisses Corey on the mouth after slapping him across the face is still the most unsettling). The result is that he becomes a closed-off person who sticks mainly to himself.
What’s unfortunate when you rewatch the cold open is that others constantly push around Corey even before the accident. When he enters the Allen home, he’s greeted warmly by Mrs. Allen (Candice Rose), but it’s made clear that her kindness is merely surface-level. She asks him questions about how he’s doing and then interrupts him as he answers. Showing that she’s either not listening or doesn’t care. The same goes for Mr. Allen (Jack William Marshall), who doesn’t even look up while playing the piano to greet Corey and openly belittles him, “I hope he’s better at childcare than he is at yard work.”
Even Jeremy is a brat to him. Corey is a friendly and relaxed babysitter who breaks the rules that Mrs. Allen has set for him. Like allowing Jeremy to watch The Thing (1982) even though he’s not allowed to watch TV—which also means John Carpenter exists in both this continuity and Halloween III: Season of the Witch . Even letting him stay up past his 8:45 pm bedtime, since the clock on the microwave says 9:27 pm when Corey enters the kitchen later (and then 9:14 pm in the following shot).
There are even paper airplanes on the coffee table while they watch the movie, which means Corey was trying to make Jeremy a good one as he requested earlier, “Can you show me how to make a Thunder Bomber? Number one of all time. My dad can do the best.“ However, through all of that, Jeremy still chastises Corey for no particular reason, “I don’t really feel like pretending to be best friends with an ugly-ass boy babysitter….You suck at babysitting.” He can’t even get respect from a kid to whom he’s been nothing but pleasant.
Besides trying to be a cool babysitter, Corey was an all-around good guy. He only took the job because he was saving money to attend college the following year and get an engineering degree. Not to mention that even though Mrs. Allen gave him carte blanche access to the fridge, and he had the opportunity to grab a beer–legal, since he was 21—he opted out to grab chocolate milk instead. Coincidentally, Michael was 21 in the original film (despite what the credits of the original movie would suggest).
The first moment Corey decides to act aggressively against his transgressors early on is when Jeremy locks him in a room upstairs. Despite asking Jeremy to unlock the door—from asking nicely to pleading to screaming in what might be a panic attack—Corey resorts to kicking down the door to get out. The result is Jeremy getting slammed by the door and falling several floors down to his death. It’s the first time Corey—a resigned person who already takes what people dish out to him—acts assertively and lets his emotions get the better of him. When he does, something catastrophic happens, resulting in him becoming even more introverted and less capable of defending himself.
By the time the film proper begins, Corey has gone through three years of being a social outcast and finally reaches his breaking point when he (a 24-year-old man) gets picked on by a group of high schoolers. It’s demoralizing, considering they’re kids and not even physically imposing. Not to mention they’re in a marching band, which, according to 80s film standards, he’s being bullied by what pop culture would perceive as nerds.
Following a second altercation with the group of kids, which results in them throwing him off a bridge and into the clutches of Michael Myers, Corey goes through something of a rebirth. After escaping from Michael, Corey gets assaulted by a homeless man who pulls a knife on him. Then, in self-defense, Corey gets the knife off him and kills him, which is the proper moment when Corey begins his descent into darkness and what separates him from The Shape.
What makes slasher movies more fun and can make the kills more satisfying is when the victims of the slasher villain are characters that we’re preordained to hate. There are the static characters that are disposable, and you feel nothing when they ungracefully exit the picture—like the early Friday the 13th sequels—and there’s the rare occasion when the characters are likable, and it’s upsetting when they die—like Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter —but it’s always the most engaging when the characters are awful and you’re just waiting for them to meet their demise.
Much like another Carpenter film, Christine–which director David Gordon Green admitted was an influence on the story, so much so that Corey’s last name is a direct nod to that film's protagonist/antagonist Arnie Cunningham–the victims of the lead character are people who have wronged them in some way. They don’t necessarily deserve to die, especially in the ways that they do, but there’s satisfaction in seeing Corey get his revenge. Unlike Michael, who kills without passion or personal pleasure, Corey kills precisely out of desire and to regain the power that the people have taken away from him, resulting in him becoming more confident and self-assured.
Corey relishes in his victims’ anguish, even making their deaths ironic. The drummer crushed Corey’s glasses, so he stabs him in the eye with a drumstick. The town’s radio DJ, Willy the Kid (Keraun Harris), who’s known for running his mouth on the air, insults Corey in front of Allyson, so he smashes his face until his jaw is dislocated and cuts his tongue off with a pair of scissors. As engaging as it is to watch these people get their comeuppance (with Corey going so far as to go after people who mistreat Allyson, like her verbally abusive boss or her former boyfriend who harasses her), Corey becomes power-hungry and dominant from the thrill of killing.
He goes so far as to attack Michael for his mask and try to kill Laurie so there’ll be nothing in the way between him and Allyson. The two of them act almost as parental figures, with Michael being the father who teaches his son the tricks of his trade by recognizing the evil that seethes beneath the surface and showing him the ropes of how to kill. Laurie, much like a consoling mother, is the first person in town (besides his stepfather) to show him any kindness and who can relate to being an outsider, and even helps him in his first act of disorder by slashing a hole in the band kid’s tire (which, inadvertently, also led him to Michael). If the two of them are like his parents, then his going after them is a form of parricide.
Corey Cunningham reasserts the concept that Norman Bates established in the original Psycho. Namely that monsters can be human, and it’s possible for a character to do bad things and still feel empathy for them. Corey gives the franchise something it didn’t have previously with Michael Myers, and that’s a face to connect with the malevolence and an understandable motivation. He helps us recognize that as much as we like to separate ourselves from monsters, we’re always one bad day—or, in his case, multiple bad years—away from becoming one ourselves.